Archive for 2006
Scrapblog interview
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
Folksonomy.com interviews Refresh’s own Carlos Garcia of Scrapblog.com. Some insight into one of Miami’s promising startups.
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December meeting notes
Tuesday, December 5th, 2006
Mike Gowen from Molehill talked about how they built their application, Tick, and shared some valuable tips. Here are some quick notes:
- Tick took a team of 4 people 9 months to build, from concept to beta. The team met for 2 hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays and 4 hours on Saturdays.The rest of the time they collaborated using Campfire (persistent chat), Skype (VoIP) and Tick, once they had a working app.
- The objective was to build a superior time-tracking tool that would integrate well with other project management and invoicing tools. So Tick can be used as a standalone product or can be used seamlessly (through API’s) with Basecamp (project management) and Blinksale (invoicing). The data can also be exported to csv.
- They adhered to many of the principles that 37signals describes in Getting Real: Build Less, Fund Yourself, It Shouldn’t be a Chore, What’s the Big Idea, Ignore Details Early On, Be Yourself, and so on. (See Molehill’s Mantra).
- They have a freemium business model, where the basic product is available indefinitely for free to all and additional, premium features and added value services are priced, in their case, at a monthly recurring fee.
- There is no ad spend. Marketing is done by providing a superior product, capitalizing on the word of mouth generated by satisfied users and using a regular ‘old-skool’ sales technique to reach corporate clients: pick up the phone and call them.
- Early on, the team talked about equity stakes and got it on paper, even though company valuation is tricky to evaluate and an exit strategy is not the primary objective.
Overall, we had a great Refresh Miami meeting and we thank Kim Grinfender, Sanjeev Chatterjee and the University of Miami’s School of Communications for hosting us.
Update: Thanks, Kim, Monica, Nick, and Xavier, among others, for linking and talking about this event.
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Refresh Miami meeting in December
Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
Our next Refresh Miami meeting and the last one this year will be held on December 4th at the University of Miami School of Communication, Wolfson Building.
If you’re in South Florida and interested in tech trends, the internet, mobile, startups, design, development, the Web 2.0, and so on, join like-minded people at our events, talk about your experiences and take part in building a strong community of web professionals in South Florida. Topics range from marketing your projects, driving traffic, finding the right investors, Mobile 2.0, beyond Web 2.0, upcoming conferences, etc. The atmosphere is casual, so please feel welcome to join us.
And don’t forget to sign up to our mailing list, on the sidebar.
Time: 7:00pm
Address: University of Miami - Wolfson Building
5100 Brunson Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33124-2105
The main phone # is: 305-284-2265 (reception area)
The School of Communication’s Wolfson Bldg. is adjacent to the parking lot that’s across from the main entrance of Doctor’s Hospital.
Click here for map
See you there!
Update: Mike Gowen from Molehill will be discussing the ins & outs of building a web application, giving an overview of the process for building Tick and what he learned along the way.
Posted in Site News | 2 Comments »
Refresh November 15th Directions & Information
Tuesday, November 14th, 2006
Time: 7:00pm
Location: University of Miami - Wolfson Building
Directions: From U.S. 1 – if coming from the south, go left onto Granada;
If coming from the north, go right onto Granada,
Turn left onto Pisano (the first street after Ponce de Leon Blvd.)
At the four-way stop, turn left onto University Drive,
At the next stop sign turn right onto Brunson Drive
The School of Communication’s Wolfson Bldg. is on your left.
The address is: 5100 Brunson Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33124-2105
The main phone # is: 305-284-2265 (reception area)
Click here for map
See you guys there.
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We Media Conference in Miami
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006
The third annual WeMedia conference will be held in South Florida next year, at the University of Miami from February 8-9, 2007.
The program (pdf) is built around two themes:
* Community: How can media and communications in a multitude of forms, produced or influenced by an ever-expanding multitude of sources, serve and strengthen the communities where people live?
* Investment: In a shifting communications marketplace, how will investors, public and private funders or new formulations of social entrepreneurship pay for and sustain the civic enterprises of news and information?
There will also be a consumer-generated VideoFest running concurrently to We Media, but considered an essential part of the conference experience. The most recent confirmations include monster.com founder Jeff Taylor, Weblogs founder Jason Calacanis and craigslist founder Craig Newmark.
Ifocos.org has kindly extended a few fellowship seats to those connected with Refresh Miami and you can apply for one here by November 13th, 2006.
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refresh06 conference
Wednesday, November 8th, 2006
The first annual Refresh the Web conference hosted by refreshOrlando will be held on November 16th - 18th, 2006. More at refresh06.
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Refreshing November
Monday, October 23rd, 2006
Hey Everyone,
I just wanted to update you all, and post a tentative date for November’s refresh meeting. Seeing as we’ve been meeting every first wednesday of the month, our next meeting should be November 1 15, 2006. We will be confirming this via the mailing list, so keep your feed reader on this site, or just check back before next wednesday.
update: the date has been changed to the 15th.
Posted in Site News | 3 Comments »
Refreshing the site
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
I’d like to thank everyone for coming out to our first RefreshMiami party last night. If you were one of the few who took pictures at the event, please post them to flickr and tag them refreshmiami.
We’ll be updating the site, with a new design soon, so if you have a mockup you want to post, or volunteer your services, let me know breslin[at]infinimedia.com and we’ll see what we can do.
I’ll be putting the google groups signup form backup soon. In the meantime, Click here to join the google group.
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Refresh Party!
Thursday, October 5th, 2006
We’re throwing a party, and its being hosted by Carlos Garcia and the fine folks at Scrapblog.com/NoBox.
This is a very casual party. So come as you are. If you feel like it, bring
some beverage (alcoholic or not). Because, it is a common area of the
building we have to wrap up the party about 10:30pm.
When:
October 11, 2006
7:00PM-10:30PM
Where:
10 Aragon Ave
Coral Gables, FL
6th Floor Pool Area
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Scrapblog featured!
Friday, June 9th, 2006
Quick heads up to those who haven’t seen it. Scrapblog was mentioned on Mashable.com yesterday. Mashable is one of the top web2.0 tracking blogs on the web. So if you haven’t checked them out yet, go now.
We’ll be featuring as many local startups here as we can. So if you know of one, pass it along our way [ breslin(at)infinimedia.com ]
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